Walking down Valencia. Nothing but clusters
of novelty shops, predictably vivid tacquerias. Talk
about a loss for metaphor.

It’s a relief when all of a sudden I remember
my distaste for poetry of place. Everywhere I go
I like to lie down and watch television.
And I don’t eat much bread until late in the afternoon.

I keep thinking of one thing
from a reading I went to my last night
in Manhattan. The poet spoke in a manner
nearly laughable. By the time he reached the end
of a line, his words had slowed so greatly

it was as if a large bird had gradually lost its life.
Or a poorly tied object had been left dragging
behind a car during the recitation
and had finally succeeded and become
fully unfastened.

Nothing to be done. After having endured so much.

What he said was to the effect of
“we live in one moment but our minds want to behold
all of time.” What I mean by this is more.

I recall a night in my apartment
when it rained so hard
one was forced to speak of little else.

Though we had been apart for a time
and were determined to continue in that,
Evan came over on the train. I was so nervous
and afraid. Maybe I blamed it on the rain,
I don’t remember. So badly I wanted to say
and did say one thing.

This is one moment in time.

Afterwards I watched some trees leaning back and forth
out of soreness and grey sheets of lightning:
all out the window. Of course I cried.
It sounds tautological on paper. One moment.

I know I am going to move West soon. It isn’t
that I want that old thing back, but it would feel good
to sense the capability to preserve it. To contain it
within some vial to grasp even while moving
into something else. Time, we say,
always meaning the part that is something else.

And how it ends up that we always speak
of seeing it as a fear, because there is
nothing else to move into. So badly
I want to be able to keep that old part
of it at the same time.

I almost can believe myself when I say
I’m not trying to put it here right now.

Knowing, too, that like all of the best parts of things
it is the kind that can not be convinced to rest for long.
The kind that wants to evaporate even more
for the fact that you love it.

“Part of my message is that we’re not central to the purpose of the Cosmos. What happened to me makes us all seem very small.”

Of course he didn’t love me or any word like that, don’t be silly—
Still, there was something there. Nothing too grave. Belief, maybe,
though he was bashful & concerned & did not want to talk about the sky,
enough even to mention a single sparse, cosmological being.

One of these nights. I thought, not meaning much
at first, then slowly dreaming up a story. It ends
with a recollection of the tile floor of his hotel bathroom:
so white it had almost looked pink. In the middle of it, I wake him up
and put a coffee filter on his freckled stomach.
I act like a bully: crying out “So there!” & laughing
just a little before I turn back over on my side.

There, in one of those worlds.
“You know I’m not a rich man.” Carl said when I asked
if I could kiss him. He had the look of someone
who had just removed a hat. Of course I was confused.
I was young and felt pretty. It seemed
like we were having such a good time.

Even and especially when they lay beside us,
we so rarely know what other people are thinking.

“Carl?” I leaned over. He began to cry and apologize.

Just then, I got afraid for myself again. Nothing new, only that old
tautological one: held in the body but rarely exhaled out or finished

–Before that chance came, he placed
his head in his hands, shielding out all of the light.

“I will never go to the moon.” His voice was shaky but certain,
and filled with so much despair.
I tried to shrug this, another thing, off.

If I could explain, it might begin where everything seems small and deliberate.

I took my bag from where it lay in the weeds
and stood up, to clear my head and better think of which part
of this would become the story, and what other part
would be left behind. I wonder what has happened to it, that other piece, if it even
still remains. Out there, somewhere.

The café has started serving wine,
and turned on each set of hanging lights

while a man is cursing the mist
that always lets itself in through some
imprecision or fixture—

*

How was that?

Did it sound like any of this was happening
in Europe? Was there at all the distinct warmth
of a small and historical place?

Well. For a moment, it felt that way.

*

Seltsam is the German word
for a peculiar feeling, though it is a term far too silly
to bring much out of us
when it comes to imagining the world shifting
as you gaze upon it: the very idea that all things
could suddenly appear foreign enough
to induce disbelief or fright.

Or even to speak of the way in which discord
can induce those we once loved to become almost—
but not quite, unfamiliar. The moment it takes
to remember some element of intimacy or knowledge

when one feels like an object suspended
between two kinds of motion that can be recognized
but not reached. That silence.

Meaning something like: In every garment,
I suppose, I’m bound to feel the misery
of earth’s constricted life.
I am too old for mere amusement
and still too young to be without desire.
What has the world to offer me?

It is this preposterous, odious burden
that is, of course, existence: almost,
but not quite enough pain to quit.

*

But perhaps it is not so bad as this.
Outside now, a homeless man stands up

and reaches out his arm. Some of its lines
are wrinkles nestled together.

Others are too strange to be anything
but illustration: dim and many,
indistinguishable from afar. Look!